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| An awe-inspiring and ambitious event took
place in October. Its name you ask - Odin’s Glow. The brainchild of Redcar and
Cleveland Council it became their mission to combine a number of community
projects - raising the profile of one particularly large hill. It’s here, in a
small village within the Tees Valley (Newton-Under-Roseberry) where the iconic
landmark Roseberry Topping sits proudly – 1059 ft high to be precise. Odin’s Glow took its name from the Nordic god of battle, Odin, and celebrates the legends that surround its given name. The astonishing light installation brought in around 10,000 visitors over four days and required the village’s roads to be closed for the entire duration. A number of specially commissioned and community artworks were unveiled and exhibited all around the village. Neil Colebeck had the exciting task of helping to light the ‘hill’, but that wasn’t all. His brief, he tells us, included lighting some of the artworks in the village below. So where does one lighting designer plunk themselves to orchestrate such a huge fete? From the comfort of a hotel room overlooking his creation of course. Neil had access to the one and only vantage point from which he had direct line of sight to the hill. The closest fixture to the desk was 700m away, the closest Falcon was 1km away and the furthest fixture was just over 1 and ½ km away. How, one might ask, does someone become involved in such a monster project? Neil reliably informs me that he has turned his hands to most things and his involvement with this particular jewel of a project began last December, while working on a different project in Gateshead. At the time he was working directly for a company called Magnetic Events and one of the directors mentioned in passing about lighting a hill. The rest, as they say, is history. Having lit most things over the past 20 years it was an opportunity not to be missed. A site visit in January this year meant Neil found himself driving horizontally through torrential winds and rains at 30mph, followed by a 45 minute climb up a 45 degree slope only to find himself not even at the top. All in a days work no less! That, for him, was the deciding moment to go ahead with the project. |
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| The budget, he’ll admit, was a challenge, but
after much negotiation and investigation over the following months he ended up
with five Alpha One Falcon 6000CMY fixtures and five colour Kinetics ColorReach
two thirds the way up the hill. Further up in the rock field at the peak’s base he placed a further 20 IP rated Par cans and a dimmer rack, snugly nestled in the crevice between two large boulders. Another ColorReach helped to illuminate the rock face itself. Behind the hill sat what Neil describes as his ‘wonderfully dedicated 'Hill Folk' crew’ with an additional Falcon to silhouette the peak. Meanwhile, to complete his brief within the village Neil took to turning off all the street lamps and replacing those with more IP pars (150w coloured floods, white 400w floods, 2 dozen Studio Due Archileds, 12 iPix BB4s, 12 PixelPar90s and a couple of dozen IP rated birdies). All controlled by a single Pearl 2008 as his budget wouldn’t stretch to his much desired D4 Having been an avid AVO fan for the best part of 18 years he wouldn’t consider using any other brand. He simply programmed the lighting of an evening and recorded the show to play back ‘faithfully’. The eventual lighting of Roseberry Topping was run from a 40 minute loop script file. Neil has also just completed his work on Enchanted Parks 09 - an innovative outdoor arts programme. |
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Date of issue : 25th October 2009
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